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UN / CONFLICT INDUCED HUNGER
STORY: UN / CONFLICT INDUCED HUNGER
TRT: 3:54
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 21 APRIL 2020, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – RECENT – NEW YORK CITY
1.Wide shot, exterior, United Nations Headquarters
21 APRIL 2020, NEW YORK CITY
2.SOUNDBITE (English) David Beasley, WFP Executive Director:
“So today, with COVID-19, I want to stress that we are not only facing a global health pandemic but also a global humanitarian catastrophe. Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the spectre of famine a very real and dangerous possibility.”
3.Wide shot, Ambassadors on screen via virtual meeting
4. SOUNDBITE (English) David Beasley, WFP Executive Director:
“Lockdowns and economic recession are expected to lead to a major loss of income among the working poor. Overseas remittances will also drop sharply - this will hurt countries such as Haiti, Nepal, and Somalia just a name a couple. The loss of tourism receipts will damage countries such as Ethiopia, where it accounts for 47 per cent of total exports. The collapsing oil prices in lower-income countries like South Sudan will have an impact significantly, where oil accounts for 98.8 per cent of total exports. And, of course, when donor countries’ revenues are down, how much impact will this have on life saving foreign aid.”
5. Wide shot, Ambassadors on screen via virtual meeting
6. SOUNDBITE (English) David Beasley, WFP Executive Director:
“Second, we need all parties involved in conflicts to give us swift and unimpeded humanitarian access to all vulnerable communities, so we can get the assistance to them that they need, regardless of who they are or where they are. We also need in a very general sense humanitarian goods and commercial trade to continue flowing across borders, because they are the lifeline of global food systems as well as the global economy. Supply chains have to keep moving if we are going to overcome this pandemic and get food from where it is produced to where it is needed.”
7. Wide shot, Ambassadors on screen via virtual meeting
8. SOUNDBITE (English) FAO Director-General, Qu Dongyu:
“Conflict prevention and acting early to reduce the impacts of conflicts are highly effective steps that can be taken to avert and reduce acute food insecurity. And we need prevention, as the forecasts for food security in 2020 look bleak. Conflicts, extreme weather, desert locusts, economic shocks and now COVID-19, are likely to push more people into acute food insecurity. But, by closely monitoring the evolution of these shocks, we can rapidly intervene to mitigate their impacts.”
9. Wide shot, Ambassadors on screen via virtual meeting
10.SOUNDBITE (English) Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council:
“We would urge the Security Council to avoid politicizing access to aid, and rather by default enable us as frontline humanitarian actors to provide relief wherever and whenever there are unmet needs - across frontlines, across borders, across political, religious and ethnic lines.”
11. Wide shot, Ambassadors on screen via virtual meeting
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council:
“There must be consequences when men with guns and power prevent children and families from accessing food through harvests or aid, and hunger is the consequence. The Security Council must ensure investigations and accountability through a mechanism to monitor and report on humanitarian access and starvation crimes. Only then will generals, commanders and politicians think twice before they deny civilians food.”
13. Wide shot, Ambassadors on screen via virtual meeting
Briefing the Security Council, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley stressed that with COVID-19, “we are not only facing a global health pandemic but also a global humanitarian catastrophe," adding that “millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the spectre of famine a very real and dangerous possibility.”
Via video link, Beasley today (21 Apr) warned the Council that while dealing with a COVID-19 pandemic, the world is also on the brink of a hunger pandemic. According the WFP, 821 million people go to bed hungry every night all over the world, chronically hungry, and as the new Global Report on Food Crisis published today shows, there are a further 135 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. That means 135 million people on earth are marching towards the brink of starvation.
The World Food Programme analysis also shows that, due to the Coronavirus, an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people.
The Executive Director stated that there is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself.
He said, “lockdowns and economic recession are expected to lead to a major loss of income among the working poor. Overseas remittances will also drop sharply - this will hurt countries such as Haiti, Nepal, and Somalia just to name a couple. The loss of tourism receipts will damage countries such as Ethiopia, where it accounts for 47 per cent of total exports. The collapsing oil prices in lower-income countries like South Sudan will have an impact significantly, where oil accounts for 98.8 per cent of total exports. And, of course, when donor countries’ revenues are down, how much impact will this have on life saving foreign aid.”
Echoing the UN Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire, Beasley urged the Council to lead the way to peace. He also said, “Secondly, we need all parties involved in conflicts to give us swift and unimpeded humanitarian access to all vulnerable communities, so they can get the assistance to them that they need, regardless of who they are or where they are.”
He continued, “we also need in a very general sense humanitarian goods and commercial trade to continue flowing across borders, because they are the lifeline of global food systems as well as the global economy. Supply chains have to keep moving if we are going to overcome this pandemic and get food from where it is produced to where it is needed.”
Also briefing the Council was the FAO Director-General, Qu Dongyu. He said that “conflict prevention and acting early to reduce the impacts of conflicts are highly effective steps that can be taken to avert and reduce acute food insecurity.”
Qu continued, “we need prevention, as the forecasts for food security in 2020 look bleak. Conflicts, extreme weather, desert locusts, economic shocks and now COVID-19, are likely to push more people into acute food insecurity. But, by closely monitoring the evolution of these shocks, we can rapidly intervene to mitigate their impacts.”
Also briefing Council Members, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland urged the Security Council to “avoid politicizing access to aid, and rather by default enable us as frontline humanitarian actors to provide relief wherever and whenever there are unmet needs - across frontlines, across borders, across political, religious and ethnic lines.”
Egeland also said that “there must be consequences when men with guns and power prevent children and families from accessing food through harvests or aid, and hunger is the consequence.”
He said that the Security Council “must ensure investigations and accountability through a mechanism to monitor and report on humanitarian access and starvation crimes. Only then will generals, commanders and politicians think twice before they deny civilians food.”
Earlier today, FAO, WFP, the EU and 13 other partners launched the 2020 edition of the Global Report on Food Crises. According to the Report, 135 million people in 55 countries experienced acute food insecurity in 2019. This is a substantial rise over last 4 years. Almost 60 percent of all those people in 2019 did so in contexts of conflict or instability.
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